Chapter VI: Part 6

+Stanza 50,+ 1. 3. _One keen pyramid._ The tomb (see last note) of Caius Cestius, a Tribune of the People.

11. 4, 5. _The dust of him who planned This refuge for his memory._ Shelley probably means that this sepulchral pyramid alone preserves to remembrance the name of Cestius: which is true enough, as next to nothing is otherwise known about him.

1. 8. _Have pitched in heaven's smile their camp of death._ The practice which Shelley follows in this line of making 'heaven' a dissyllable is very frequent with him. So also with 'even, higher,' and other such words.

+Stanza 51,+ 11. 3, 4. _If the seal is set Here on one fountain of a mourning mind._ Shelley certainly alludes to himself in this line. His beloved son William, who died in June 1819, in the fourth year of his age, was buried in this cemetery: the precise spot is not now known.

11. 5-7. _Too surely shalt thou find Thine own well full, if thou returnest home, Of tears and gall. From the world's bitter wind_, &c. The apposition between the word 'well' and the preceding word 'fountain' will be observed. The person whom Shelley addresses would, on returning home from the cemetery, find more than, ample cause, of one sort or another, for distress and discomposure. Hence follows the conclusion that he would do well to 'seek shelter in the shadow of the tomb': he should prefer the condition of death to that of life. And so we reach in stanza 51 the same result which, in stanza 47, was deduced from a different range of considerations.

+Stanza 52,+ 1. 1. _The One remains, the many change and pass._ See the notes on stanzas 42 and 43. 'The One' is the same as 'the One Spirit' in stanza 43--the Universal Mind. The Universal Mind has already been spoken of (stanza 38) as 'the Eternal.' On the other hand, 'the many' are the individuated minds which we call 'human beings': they 'change and pass'--the body perishing, the mind which informed it being (in whatever sense) reabsorbed into 'the Eternal.'

1. 2. _Heaven's light for ever shines, earth's shadows fly._ This is in strictness a physical descriptive image: in application, it means the same as the preceding line.

11. 3-5. _Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, Stains the white radiance of eternity, Until Death tramples it to fragments._ Perhaps a more daring metaphorical symbol than this has never been employed by any poet, nor one that has a deeper or a more spacious meaning. Eternity is figured as white light--light in its quintessence. Life, mundane life, is as a dome of glass, which becomes many-coloured by its prismatic diffraction of the white light: its various prisms reflect eternity at different angles. Death ultimately tramples the glass dome into fragments; each individual life is shattered, and the whole integer of life, constituted of the many individual lives, is shattered. If everything else written by Shelley were to perish, and only this consummate image to remain--so vast in purport, so terse in form--he would still rank as a poet of lofty imagination. _Ex pede Herculem._

11. 5, 6. _Die, If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek._ This phrase is addressed by the poet to anybody, and more especially to himself. As in stanza 38--'The pure spirit shall flow Back to the burning fountain whence it came, A portion of the Eternal.'

11. 7-9. _Rome's azure sky, Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weak The glory thy transfuse with fitting truth to speak._ I follow here the punctuation of the Pisan edition--with a comma after 'words,' as well as after 'sky, flowers,' &c. According to this punctuation, the words of Rome, as well as her sky and other beautiful endowments, are too weak to declare at full the glory which they impart; and the inference from this rather abruptly introduced recurrence to Rome is (I suppose), that the spiritual glory faintly adumbrated by Rome can only be realised in that realm of eternity to which death gives access. Taken in this sense, the 'words' of Rome appear to mean 'the beautiful language spoken in Rome'--the Roman or Latin language, as modified into modern Italian. The pronunciation of Italian in Rome is counted peculiarly pure and rich: hence the Italian axiom, 'lingua toscana in bocca romana'--Tuscan tongue in Roman mouth. At first sight, it would seem far more natural to punctuate thus: Rome's azure sky, Flowers, ruins, statues, music,--words are weak The glory, &c. The sense would then be--Words are too weak to declare at full the glory inherent in the sky, flowers, &c. of Rome. Yet, although this seems a more straightforward arrangement for the words of the sentence, as such, it is not clear that such a comment on the beauties of Rome would have any great relevancy in its immediate context.

+Stanza 53,+ 1. 2. _Thy hopes are gone before_, &c. This stanza contains some very pointed references to the state of Shelley's feelings at the time when he was writing _Adonais_; pointed, but not so clearly defined as to make his actual meaning transparent. We are told that his hopes are gone before (i.e. have vanished before the close of his life has come), and have departed from all things here. This may partly refer to the deaths of William Shelley and of Keats; but I think the purport of the phrase extends further, and implies that Shelley's hopes generally--those animating conceptions which had inspired him in early youth, and had buoyed him up through many adversities--are now waning in disappointment. This is confirmed by the ensuing statement--that 'a light is past from the revolving year [a phrase repeated from stanza 18], and man and woman.' Next we are told that 'what still is dear Attracts to crush, repels to make thee [me] wither.' The _persons_ who were more particularly dear to Shelley at this time must have been (not to mention the two children Percy Florence Shelley and Allegra Clairmont) his wife, Miss Clairmont, Emilia Viviani, and Lieutenant and Mrs. Williams: Byron, Leigh Hunt, and Godwin, can hardly be in question. No doubt Shelley's acute feelings and mobile sympathies involved him in some considerable agitations, from time to time, with all the four ladies here named: but the strong expressions which he uses as to attracting and repelling, crushing and withering, seem hardly likely to have been employed by him in this personal sense, in a published book. Perhaps therefore we shall be safest in supposing that he alludes, not to _persons_ who are dear, but to circumstances and conditions of a more general kind--such as are involved in his self-portraiture, stanzas 31-34.

1. 8. _'Tis Adonais calls! oh hasten thither!_ 'Thither' must mean 'to Adonais': a laxity of expression.

+Stanza 64,+ 1. 1. _That light whose smile kindles the universe_, &c. This is again the 'One Spirit' of stanza 43. And see, in stanza 42, the cognate expression, 'kindles it above.'

11. 3, 4. _That benediction which the eclipsing curse Of birth can quench not._ The curse of birth is, I think, simply the calamitous condition of mundane life--so often referred to in this Elegy as a condition of abjection and unhappiness. The curse of birth can eclipse the benediction of Universal Mind, but cannot quench it: in other words, the human mind, in its passage from the birth to the death of the body, is still an integral portion of the Universal Mind.

1. 7. _Each are mirrors._ This is of course a grammatical irregularity--the verb should be 'is.' It is not the only instance of the same kind in Shelley's poetry.

1. 9. _Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality._ This does not imply that Shelley is shortly about to die. 'Cold mortality' is that condition in which the human mind, a portion of the Universal Mind, is united to a mortal body: and the general sense is that the Universal Mind at this moment beams with such effulgence upon Shelley that his mind responds to it as if the mortal body no longer interposed any impediment.

+Stanza 55,+ 1. 1. _The breath whose might I have invoked in song._ The breath or afflatus of the Universal Mind. It has been 'invoked in song' throughout the whole later section of this Elegy, from stanza 38 onwards.

1. 2. _My spirits bark is driven_, &c. As was observed with reference to the preceding stanza, line 9, this phrase does not forecast the author's death: it only re-emphasises the abnormal illumination of his mind by the Universal Mind--as if his spirit (like that of Keats) 'had flowed back to the burning fountain whence it came, a portion of the Eternal' (stanza 38). Nevertheless, it is very remarkable that this image of 'the spirit's _bark_,' beaconed by 'the soul of Adonais,' should have been written so soon before Shelley's death by drowning, which occurred on 8 July, 1822,--but little more than a year after he had completed this Elegy. Besides this passage, there are in Shelley's writings, both verse and prose, several other passages noticeable on the same account--relating to drowning, and sometimes with a strong personal application; and in various instances he was in imminent danger of this mode of death before the end came.

11. 3, 4. _Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng Whose sails were never to the tempest given._ In saying that his spirit's bark is driven far from the shore, Shelley apparently means that his mind, in speculation and aspiration, ranges far beyond those mundane and material interests with which the mass of men are ordinarily concerned. 'The trembling throng' is, I think, a throng of men: though it might be a throng of barks, contrasted with 'my spirit's bark.' Their sails 'were never to the tempest given,' in the sense that they never set forth on a bold ideal or spiritual adventure, abandoning themselves to the stress and sway of a spiritual storm.

1. 5. _The massy earth_, &c. As the poet launches forth on his voyage upon the ocean of mind, the earth behind him seems to gape, and the sky above him to open: his course however is still held on in darkness--the arcanum is hardly or not at all revealed.

1. 7. _Whilst burning through the inmost veil_, &c. A star pilots his course: it is the soul of Adonais, which, being still 'a portion of the Eternal' (st. 38), is in 'the abode where the Eternal are,' and testifies to the eternity of mind. In this passage, and in others towards the conclusion of the poem, we find the nearest approach which Shelley can furnish to an answer to that question which he asked in stanza 20--'Shall that alone which knows Be as a sword consumed before the sheath By sightless lightning?'

+Stanzas 4. to 6+--(I add here a note out of its due place, which would be on p. 101: at the time when it occurred to me to raise this point, the printing had gone too far to allow of my inserting the remark there.)--On considering these three stanzas collectively, it may perhaps be felt that the references to Milton and to Keats are more advisedly interdependent than my notes on the details of the stanzas suggest. Shelley may have wished to indicate a certain affinity between the inspiration of Milton as the poet of _Paradise Lost_, and that of Keats as the poet of _Hyperion_. Urania had had to bewail the death of Milton, who died old when 'the priest, the slave, and the liberticide,' outraged England. Now she has to bewail the death of her latest-born, Keats, who has died young, and (as Shelley thought) in a similarly disastrous condition of the national affairs. Had he not been 'struck by the envious wrath of man,' he might even have 'dared to climb' to the 'bright station' occupied by Milton.--The phrase in st. 4, 'Most musical of mourners, weep again,' with what follows regarding grief for the loss of Milton, and again of Keats, is modelled upon the passage in Moschus (p. 65)--'This, O most musical of rivers, is thy second sorrow,--this, Meles, thy new woe. Of old didst thou love Homer:... now again another son thou weepest.' My remark upon st. 13, that there Shelley first had direct recourse to the Elegy of Moschus, should be modified accordingly.

_Cancelled Passages of Adonais, Preface._ These are taken from Dr. Garnett's _Relics of Shelley_, published in 1862. He says: 'Among Shelley's MSS. is a fair copy of the _Defence of Poetry_, apparently damaged by sea-water, and illegible in many places. Being prepared for the printer, it is written on one side of the paper only: on the blank pages, but frequently undecipherable for the reason just indicated, are many passages intended for, but eventually omitted from, the preface to _Adonais_.'

_I have employed my poetical compositions and publications simply as the instruments of that sympathy between myself and others which the ardent and unbounded love I cherished for my kind incited me to acquire._ This is an important indication of the spirit in which Shelley wrote, and consequently of that in which his reader should construe his writings. He poured out his full heart, craving for 'sympathy.' Loving mankind, he wished to find some love in response.

_Domestic conspiracy and legal oppression_, &c. The direct reference here is to the action taken by Shelley's father-in-law and sister-in-law, Mr. and Miss Westbrook, which resulted in the decree of Lord Chancellor Eldon whereby Shelley was deprived of the custody of the two children of his first marriage. See p. 12. _As a bankrupt thief turns thief-taker in despair, so an unsuccessful author turns critic._ Various writers have said something of this kind. I am not sure how far back the sentiment can be traced; but I presume that Shelley was not the first. Some readers will remember a passage in the dedication to his _Peter Bell the Third_ (1819), which forestalled Macaulay's famous phrase about the 'New Zealander on the ruins of London Bridge.' Shelley wrote: 'In the firm expectation that, when London shall be an habitation of bitterns;... when the piers of Waterloo Bridge shall become the nuclei of islets of reeds and osiers, and cast the jagged shadows of their broken arches on the solitary stream; some Transatlantic commentator will be weighing, in the scales of some new and unimagined system of criticism, the respective merits of the Bells and the Fudges, and their historians, I remain,' &c.

_The offence of this poor victim seems to have consisted solely in his intimacy with Leigh Hunt_, &c. See the remarks on p. 45. There can be no doubt that Shelley was substantially correct in this opinion. Not only the _Quarterly Review_, of which he knew, but also _Blackwood's Magazine_, which did not come under his notice, abused Keats because he was personally acquainted with Hunt, and was, in one degree or another, a member of the literary coterie in which Hunt held a foremost place. And Hunt was in bad odour with these reviews because he was a hostile politician, still more than because of any actual or assumed defects in his performances as an ordinary man of letters.

_Mr. Hazlitt._ William Hazlitt was (it need scarcely be said) a miscellaneous writer of much influence in these years, in politics an advanced Liberal. A selection of his writings was issued by Mr. William Ireland in 1889. Keats admired Hazlitt much more than Hunt.

_I wrote to him, suggesting the propriety_, &c. See pp. 14, 15.

_Cancelled Passages of Adonais_ (the poem). These passages also were in the first instance published in the _Shelley Relics_ of Dr. Garnett. They come, not from the same MS. which contains the prefatory fragments, but from some of Shelley's notebooks.

+Stanza 1,+ 1. 1. _And the green paradise_, &c. The green paradise is the 'Emerald Isle'--Ireland. This stanza refers to Thomas Moore, and would have followed on after st. 30 in the body of the poem.

+Stanza 2,+ 1. 1. _And ever as he went he swept a lyre Of unaccustomed shape._ 'He' has always hitherto, I think, been understood as the 'one frail form' of st 31--i.e. Shelley himself. The lyre might be of unaccustomed shape for the purpose of indicating that Shelley's poetry differs very essentially, in tone and treatment, from that of other writers. But I incline to think that Shelley, in this stanza, refers not to himself but to Moore. Moore was termed a 'lyrist,' and here we are told about his lyre. The latter would naturally be the Irish harp, and therefore 'of unaccustomed shape': the concluding reference to 'ever-during green' might again glance at the 'Emerald Isle.' As to Shelley, he was stated in st. 33 to be carrying 'a light spear': if he was constantly sweeping a lyre as well, he must have had his hands rather full.

1. 3. _Now like the ... of impetuous fire_, &c. Shelley compares the strains of the lyre--the spirit of the poetry--to two things: (1) to a conflagration in a forest; and (2) to the rustling of wind among the trees. The former image may be understood to apply principally to the revolutionary audacity and fervour of the ideas expressed; the latter, to those qualities of imagination, fantasy, beauty, and melody, which characterise the verse. Of course all this would be more genuinely appropriate to Shelley himself than to Moore: still it would admit of _some_ application to Moore, of whom our poet spoke highly more than once elsewhere. The image of a forest on fire is more fully expressed in a passage from the _Lines written among the Euganean Hills_, composed by him in 1818:--

'Now new fires from antique light Spring beneath the wide world's might,-- But their spark lies dead in thee [i.e. in Padua], Trampled out by Tyranny, As the Norway woodman quells, In the depths of piny dells, One light flame among the brakes, While the boundless forest shakes, And its mighty trunks are torn, By the fire thus lowly born;-- The spark beneath his feet is dead; He starts to see the flames it fed Howling through the darkened sky With a myriad tongues victoriously, And sinks down in fear;-so thou, O Tyranny! beholdest now

Light around thee, and thou hearest The loud flames ascend, and fearest. Grovel on the earth! ay, hide In the dust thy purple pride!'

+Stanza 3,+ 1. 1. _And then came one of sweet and earnest looks._ It is sufficiently clear that this stanza, and also the fragmentary beginning of stanza 4, refer to Leigh Hunt--who, in the body of the Elegy, is introduced in st. 35. The reader will observe, on looking back to that stanza, that the present one could not be added on to the description of Hunt: it is an alternative form, ultimately rejected. Its tone is ultra-sentimental, and perhaps on that account it was condemned. The simile at the close of the present stanza is ambitious, but by no means felicitous.

+Stanza 4,+ 11. 1, 2. _His song, though very sweet, was low and faint, A simple strain._ It may be doubted whether this description of Hunt's poetry, had it been published in _Adonais_, would have been wholly pleasing to Hunt. Neither does it define, with any exceptional aptness, the particular calibre of that poetry.

+Stanza 5,+ 11. 1, 2. _A mighty Phantasm, half concealed In darkness of his own exceeding light._ It seems to have been generally assumed that Shelley, in this stanza, describes one more of the 'Mountain Shepherds' (see st. 30)--viz. Coleridge. No doubt, if any poet or person is here indicated, it must be Coleridge: and the affirmative assumption is so far confirmed by the fact that in another poem--the _Letter to Maria Gisborne_, 1820--Shelley spoke of Coleridge in terms partly similar to these:--

'You will see Coleridge; he who sits obscure In the exceeding lustre and the pure Intense irradiation of a mind Which, with its own internal lightning blind, Flags wearily through darkness and despair-- A cloud-encircled meteor of the air, A hooded eagle among blinking owls.'

But the first question is--Does this cancelled stanza relate to a Mountain Shepherd at all? To speak of a Mountain Shepherd as a 'mighty Phantasm,' having an 'awful presence unrevealed,' seems to be taking a considerable liberty with language. To me it appears more likely that the stanza relates to some abstract impersonation--perhaps Death, or else Eternity. It is true that Death figures elsewhere in _Adonais_ (stanzas 7, 8, 25) under an aspect with which the present phrases are hardly consistent: but, in the case of a cancelled stanza, that counts for very little. In _Prometheus Unbound_ (Act ii, sc. 4) Eternity, symbolised in Demo-gorgon, is described in terms not wholly unlike those which we are now debating:--

'I see a mighty Darkness Filling the seat of power, and rays of gloom Dart round, as light from the meridian sun, Ungazed upon and shapeless. Neither limb, Nor form, nor outline; yet we feel it is A living Spirit.'

As to the phrase in the cancelled stanza, 'In darkness of his own exceeding light,' it need hardly be observed that this is modified from the expression in Paradise Lost (Book 3):--

'Dark with excessive bright thy skirts appear.'

1. 5. _Thunder-smoke, whose skirts were chrysolite._ Technically, chrysolite is synonymous with the precious stone peridot, or olivine--its tint is a yellowish green. But probably Shelley thought only of the primary meaning of the word chrysolite, 'golden-stone,' and his phrase as a whole comes to much the same thing as 'a cloud with a golden lining.'

+Stanza 6,+ 1. 1. _And like a sudden meteor._ We here have a fragmentary simile which may--or equally well may not--follow on as connected with St. 5. See on p. 147, for whatever it may be worth in illustration, the line relating to Coleridge:--

'A cloud-encircled meteor of the air.'

1. 5. _Pavilioned in its tent of light._ Shelley was fond of the word Pavilion, whether as substantive or as verb. See St. 50: 'Pavilioning the dust of him,' &c.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] See the _Life of Mrs. Shelley_, by Lucy Madox Rossetti (_Eminent Women Series_), published in 1890. The connexion between the two branches of the Shelley family is also set forth--incidentally, but with perfect distinctness--in Collins's _Peerage of England_(1756), vol. iii. p. 119. He says that Viscount Lumley (who died at some date towards 1670) 'married Frances, daughter of Henry Shelley, of Warminghurst in Sussex, Esq. (a younger branch of the family seated at Michaelgrove, the seat of the present Sir John Shelley, Bart.).'

[2] I am indebted to Mr. J. Cordy Jeaffreson for some strongly reasoned arguments, in private-correspondence, tending to Harriet's disculpation.

[3] This line (should be '_Beneath_ the good,' &c.) is the final line of Gray's _Progress of Poesy_. The sense in which Shelley intends to apply it to _The Cenci_ may admit of some doubt. He seems to mean that _The Cenci_ is not equal to really good tragedies; but still is superior to some tragedies which have recently appeared, and which bad critics have dubbed great.

[4] This phrase is not very clear to me. From the context ensuing, it might seem that the 'circumstance' which prevented Keats from staying with Shelley in Pisa was that his nerves were in so irritable a state as to prompt him to move from place to place in Italy rather than fix in any particular city or house.

[5] Though Shelley gave this advice, which was anything but unsound, he is said to have taken good-naturedly some steps with a view to getting the volume printed. Mr. John Dix, writing in 1846, says: 'He [Shelley] went to Charles Richards, the printer in St. Martin's Lane, when quite young, about the printing a little volume of Keats's first poems.'

[6] This statement is not correct--so far at least as the longer poems in the volume are concerned. _Isabella_ indeed was finished by April, 1818; but _Hyperion_ was not relinquished till late in 1819, and the _Eve of St. Agnes_ and _Lamia_ were probably not even begun till 1819.

[7] See p, 96 as to Shelley's under-rating of Keats's age. He must have supposed that Keats was only about twenty years old at the date when _Endymion_ was completed. The correct age was twenty-two.

[8] The passages to which Shelley refers begin thus: 'And then the forest told it in a dream;' 'The rosy veils mantling the East;' 'Upon a weeded rock this old man sat.'

[9] I do not find in Shelley's writings anything which distinctly modifies this opinion. However, his biographer, Captain Medwin, avers that Shelley valued all the poems in Keats's final volume; he cites especially _Isabella_ and _The Eve of St. Agnes_.

[10] In books relating to Keats and Shelley the name of this gentleman appears repeated, without any explanation of who he was. In a MS. diary of Dr. John Polidori, Byron's travelling physician (my maternal uncle), I find the following account of Colonel Finch, whom Polidori met in Milan in 1816: 'Colonel Finch, an extremely pleasant, good-natured, well-informed, clever gentleman, spoke Italian extremely well, and was very well read in Italian literature. A ward of his gave a masquerade in London upon her coming of age. She gave to each a character in the reign of Queen Elizabeth to support, without the knowledge of each other; and received them in a saloon in proper style as Queen Elizabeth. He mentioned to me that Nelli had written a Life of Galileo, extremely fair, which, if he had money by him, he would buy, that it might be published. Finch is a great admirer of architecture in Italy. Mr. Werthern, a gentleman most peaceable and quiet I ever saw, accompanying Finch, whose only occupation [I understand this to mean the occupation of Wethern, but possibly it means of Finch] is, when he arrives at a town or other place, to set about sketching, and then colouring, so that he has perhaps the most complete collection of sketches of his tour possible. He invited me (taking me for an Italian), in case I went to England, to see him; and, hearing I was English, he pressed me much more,' The name 'Werthern' is not distinctly written: should it be 'Wertheim'?

[11] 'Envy' refers no doubt to hostile reviewers. 'Ingratitude' refers to a statement of Colonel Finch that Keats had 'been infamously treated by the very persons whom his generosity had rescued from want and woe.' It is not quite clear who were the persons alluded to by Finch. Keats's brother George (then in America) was presumably one: he is, however, regarded as having eventually cleared himself from the distressing imputation. I know of no one else, unless possibly the painter Haydon may be glanced at: as to him also the charge appears to be too severe and sweeping.

[12] Shelley wrote another letter on 16 June--to Miss Clairmont, then in Florence. It contains expressions to nearly the same purport. 'I have received a most melancholy account of the last illness of poor Keats; which I will neither tell you nor send you, for it would make you too low-spirited. My Elegy on him is finished. I have dipped my pen in consuming fire to chastise his destroyers; otherwise the tone of the poem is solemn and exalted. I send it to the press here, and you will soon have a copy.'

[13] As Byron is introduced into _Adonais_ as mourning for Keats, and as in fact he cared for Keats hardly at all, it seems possible that his silence was dictated by antagonism rather than by modesty.

[14] _Blackwood_ seems to imply that the _Quarterly_ accused _Endymion_ of indecency; this is not correct.

[15] The reader of Keats's preface will find that this is a misrepresentation. Keats did not speak of any fierce hell of criticism, nor did he ask to remain uncriticised in order that he might write more. What he said was that a feeling critic would not fall foul of him for hoping to write good poetry in the long run, and would be aware that Keats's own sense of failure in _Endymion_ was as fierce a hell as he could be chastised by.

[16] This passage of the letter had remained unpublished up to 1890. It then appeared in Mr. Buxton Forman's volume, _Poetry and Prose by John Keats_. Some authentic information as to Keats's change of feeling had, however, been published before.

[17] This phrase is lumbering and not grammatical. The words 'I confess that I am unable to refuse' would be all that the meaning requires.

[18] This seems to contradict the phrase in _Adonais_ (stanza 20) 'Nought we know dies.' Probably Shelley, in the prose passage, does not intend 'perishes' to be accepted in the absolute sense of 'dies,' or 'ceases to have any existence;' he means that all things undergo a process of deterioration and decay, leading on to some essential change or transmutation. The French have the word 'dêpérir' as well as 'périr': Shelley's 'perishes' would correspond to 'dépérit.'